


Special NPR Report: Five Years After Switzerland

by yaladytauriel



Series: My Heart is a Concert [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, for gabe i mean, her name is penelope and i love her very much, i should say that this is post-"death", so i got excited after The News, this is almost a prologue to what i'm going to post in like April
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 13:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17346011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yaladytauriel/pseuds/yaladytauriel
Summary: A transcript of Karley Pierce's interview with the surviving members of the Reyes family.





	Special NPR Report: Five Years After Switzerland

_**NPR Broadcast, 14 June 2076** _

 

**Miranda Jennings, NPR News** : We’re now sending it over to Karley Pierce, with our special miniseries about the remains of Overwatch five years later. 

 

**Karley (Narration)** : It’s been five years since the Swiss HQ was destroyed in a terrorist attack and the UN shut Overwatch down for good. And while some are writing articles about what could be happening with the possible survivors of the attack, we wanted to cut away the conjecture and look at the lives of survivors we know. Over the next two weeks, I will be interviewing those people whose lives were affected most, as well as possibly some of the people behind the decisions made by the often controversial organization. 

My first interviewees are none other than Penelope and Julia Reyes, wife and daughter to one of the most powerful - and some would say corrupt - men in the world, at one time. But the picture they created, both of Commander Reyes and the life they led together, is something very different than the public ever heard. 

 

**Penelope** : With us, you know, it was very different. He could be - well, difficult - but he wasn’t what you’d see in the tabloids. Complicated, sure, but a genuinely good man. 

 

**Karley (Narration)** : We’re sitting at the marble counter in Penelope’s Central Park-bordering apartment. It’s Saturday, Penelope is finished with her grading for the moment. In the background, Julia is putting the finishing touches on a watercolor piece she is entering in a school contest. A typical familial scene, but there’s a weight in the home that I felt upon entering. 

 

**Penelope** : That kind of thing, it really doesn’t leave you. It’s not that I haven’t tried to pick up the pieces, I just - It’s a heavy loss, not just a husband, but friends, coworkers. A job. With the attack, I lost a huge piece of my life. I’d been there for almost twenty-five years, and then I was just left, alone, an eleven-year-old to take care of, no job. I felt lost. 

 

**Karley** : What did you do afterward? 

 

**Penelope** : We did what we could. Julia finished the grade, I signed her up for school and counseling. I got a job at Laguardia, so I could start making my own money again. But - it’s a process, you know, it’s not something that happens overnight. And I miss him every day. 

 

**Karley** : He was at the center of a lot of controversy and intrigue in the later years of Overwatch, but you were out of all of it - there’s a video of you - 

 

**Penelope** : Right, that was during the trial. 

 

**Karley** : May I ask why you didn’t get involved? 

 

**Penelope** : It was our private life. I didn’t want that out in the open. I know that the trial was about something he did publicly, but it was tabloids asking if we were divorcing, if I knew anything about what he was planning, was he -  _ involved  _ with Doctor O’Deorain, all that. I had no desire to answer any of their questions, so I took myself out of the equation. 

 

**Karley (Narration)** : For her part, Penelope says she never stopped loving him. 

 

**Penelope** : Even through the worst of it, I still loved him. It maybe took some convincing, but I did. I do. 

 

**Karley** : And what of the allegations he was in league with Talon? According to - 

 

**Penelope** : I know what they said. No, he never was, nor were the facts of that report straight. Jack and Gabe may have been at each other’s throats by the end, but neither one would risk the lives of friends and family for their petty feud. I think the picture painted is one of Jack trying to keep Overwatch afloat and Gabe trying to undermine him at every turn, but it wasn’t like that. Petras was all over everything after Blackwatch was revealed, and Gabe wanted freedom, yes, but he felt the organization wasn’t doing enough. He’s the reason we went into King’s Row, you know. 

 

**Karley** : Really? 

 

**Penelope** : Yes. I remember when  _ we  _ went as a family, months before the orders were given. He genuinely cared about what was going on there, the destruction. I think he saw another Crisis starting. And having gone through one before, we were both… He knew how to force Jack’s hand. So he did. 

 

**Karley** : So a freedom fighter, not a terrorist. 

 

**Penelope** : Tired, I would say. 

 

**Karley** : Do you think your relationship affected how things worked in Overwatch? I mean, were he alone, would he have done what he did? 

 

**Penelope** : I don’t know. He was headstrong, to say the least. I don’t think I ever really stopped him from doing something he thought needed to be done. But I think - Before we knew each other well, according to people who knew him better, he was pretty… reckless. I think after we were married, and certainly after Julia, he became less so. More concerned with how his recklessness would affect us, back at home. But he still - I mean, Julia was nine when he killed Antonio, so he was still  _ himself,  _ even after us. 

 

**Karley** : I know you haven’t answered questions about Venice in the past, but I’d like to ask… 

 

**Penelope** : There were other factors involved. He was right, Antonio wouldn’t have stood trial for anything he’d done. Gabe did what he thought was right. But there was a lot more besides that, and that - we got through it eventually.  

 

**Karley** : Can I ask what your relationship was like? Not to barge into your private lives, but there’s the Commander Reyes we all heard about, but you knew a different side of him. In our conversation so far, he seems a lot less brash and rebellious than the man I thought I knew. 

 

**Penelope** : No, no, he was still brash and rebellious, at least, he could be. I - Hm. Well, for example, it took us two years to start dating. We just kept dancing around the subject; I’m sure it was annoying as hell to live through. But that’s the kind of man he could be, too. He told me once, we were actually here, looking at venues for the wedding, he told me that he didn’t think I would have been interested in him, given I was a music theory major and he was a soldier. Can you believe! He walks around looking like  _ that  _ and he thought  _ I  _ wouldn’t be interested. 

 

**Karley** : Were you one of  _ those  _ women during the Crisis? 

 

**Penelope** : Oh, God, yes. Not  _ outwardly,  _ of course, I’m too reserved, but I may or may not have bought the TIME magazine he was on the cover of. 

 

**Karley** : Just because he was on the cover?

 

**Penelope** :  _ (laughing)  _ Yes, of course! You’ve seen it, I’m sure. He looked - I mean, let’s just say I was two parts happy and two parts very nervous to be his assistant. Anyway, our relationship. 

 

**Karley** : Right. 

 

**Penelope** : He was, well, he was  _ tender  _ with me. With a lot of people, honestly. You were saying, there’s this picture that’s in people’s minds of what he must have been like, all gruff and overbearing and domineering. He wasn’t. He was the man who cried at his best friend’s wedding, who wanted to name his daughter Grace because the concept of divine forgiveness was his favorite part of religion, who stress baked and made our Halloween costumes. He bought me a piano, because I was sad and I missed playing. He and Angela - Doctor Ziegler - would talk horror films while she was working on her Valkyrie suit, just to keep her company. Of course, he was a person and therefore had  _ faults,  _ he could be so  _ aggravating  _ sometimes _ ,  _ but… you know, he was a good man. He really, really was. And it pains me to know that so many people will look at his life’s work and not see the man behind it. 

  
  


**Karley (Narration)** : I remember when Julia Reyes was born - it was everywhere when I was starting college. Sixteen years later, she’s an amateur artist, ceramicist, and a vivacious girl, despite the traumas of her past. 

 

**Julia** : This is one I entered in the New York Youth Modern Art Exhibition. I didn’t win anything, but like, I’m proud as hell to have been included. 

 

**Karley (Narration)** : The painting in question is a still-life of a bouquet of half-dried lilies and roses. The paint is thick and expressive, shades of blues and reds staccatoed with bright flashes of neon pink. She directs me to a table in her studio filled with plates, bowls, mugs, and other assorted ceramic creations. 

 

**Julia** : This is all my newer stuff. 

 

**Karley** : You’re really good! These plates look like something I’d buy downtown or something. 

 

**Julia** : Thanks! I really enjoy it, to my mother’s chagrin. 

 

**Karley (Narration)** : There is no denying that Penelope and Julia are two very different women. Penelope is clean, hair in a well-kept updo, dressed in an expensive white blouse and dark grey slacks, a Cartier watch on her wrist. Julia, on the other hand, has her hair in a loose ponytail, paint and clay spattered on her jeans and face, wearing a T-shirt for a band that was old when she was born. 

 

**Julia** : Dad  _ loved  _ Weezer. He grew up in California, so like, I think he had to. 

 

**Karley** : What do you remember about him? 

 

**Julia** : A lot, I mean, I was eleven when he died. I remember - like, it’s funny, I was actually just learning about this in my current events class, but I do remember the trial and everything, after he shot that Antonio guy out a window? Mostly I remember that Mom and I moved back here, and they weren’t talking for, like,  _ ever.  _ But that’s not - like, that’s not my  _ dad.  _ Not like I knew him anyway. 

 

**Karley** : That’s the sense I’m getting from you and your mother. We as a public really only saw one part of him. 

 

**Julia** : Oh, yeah. Yeah, like, he did shoot a guy out a window, but he was also - I mean, he was my  _ dad.  _ And he was a super good one, from what I remember. Like, he would read me stories at night and stuff. Mom told me, like, he was the one who got me the tutor. Mom wanted to send me to France for school, but he wouldn’t let her, so I got my tutor instead. And I mean, looking back now, I must have had full run of the base, because I doubt anyone would have told him, ‘Hey, get your daughter out of here.’ 

 

**Karley** : That’s right, you grew up on the base.

 

**Julia** : Yep. What you were saying before, I mean, there was a lot of focus on all the bad shit he did. And I’m not saying he didn’t do it, I’m just saying that if people had been around him, they would have seen a guy who, like, loved his kids and wife and watched the sunrise. He was definitely not the cold-blooded murderer everyone portrays him to be. 

 

**Karley** : Do you think he could have been? 

 

**Julia** : Like, in his heart of hearts, he was actually just a sociopath?

 

**Karley** : Something like that. 

 

**Julia** : Nah. Look, Jack Morrison killed people too. I love him a lot, he was like an uncle to me, but he  _ did.  _ But no one talks about him the way they talk about my dad. Dad had a hard job. He was the commander of a stealth unit, he was going against a terrorist organization, he was  _ sick,  _ like, he had a lot going on. 

 

**Karley** : Sick? 

 

**Julia** : Something they did in the SEP, yeah. I was super young, I don’t remember at all, but I know he was. 

 

**Karley** : So there’s no chance he was part of Talon. 

 

**Julia** : He almost got fired trying to take them out. There’s no chance. 

 

**Karley (Narration)** : This seemed to be the consensus between the women - Gabriel Reyes, to the two people who likely knew him best, was not a secret agent for the international terrorist organization. I wanted to know what else in that report might have been misunderstood, so I headed off to Switzerland to speak to another woman mentioned in the report. Tomorrow, my interview with Dr. Angela Ziegler. 


End file.
